Yu Wei Gong, the 26-year-old Waikiki man who allegedly called 911 Tuesday morning and told police he killed his mother a year ago, will be charged with second-degree murder upon his discharge from the hospital, police said.
Bail will be set at $2 million.
Gong was hospitalized after his arrest Tuesday for undisclosed reasons.
Gong reportedly had gotten into a fight with his mother over tuition money for school.
Qui Cadorna, who lives across the hall from Gong, said the building manager told him Wednesday that Gong and his mother had gotten into a fight when he asked her for money to attend school, but she refused to give him any.
Cadorna said the manager learned from police that Gong didn’t mean to kill her, then placed her body in a freezer.
Homicide Lt. Phillip Lavarias of the Honolulu Police Department said they executed a search warrant at the residential building at 414 Launiu St. just after 6 a.m. Wednesday and discovered the remains, which were transported to the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office.
The body was not identified Wednesday.
Lavarias declined to disclose where the remains were located within the apartment and whether the woman’s body is that of the Gong’s mother.
Detectives are interviewing witnesses to determine when the victim was last seen.
Police arrested Gong at 7:36 a.m. Tuesday on suspicion of second-degree murder after he called 911 and said he was suicidal and that he killed his mother a year ago.
Gong attended Kapiolani Community College from fall 2011 to spring 2016, the University of Hawaii said. He also had been registered for classes at Honolulu Community College in 2014.
Next-door neighbor Bonnie Greenlaw said she hadn’t seen the woman in apartment 605 for more than a month, and thought the woman was a massage therapist.
Tatsuko Morimoto, president of the Hawaii Massage Academy, said Liu Yun Gong attended her school in 2011, and her son attended in 2012 when he was 21.
“Mother always go after him, ‘Do this. Do that. Live with me,’” Morimoto said.
“Sometimes boy don’t like mother telling him what to do. She always tell him what to do.”
Liu Yun Gong was a licensed massage therapist, and the website for Liu Yun China Massage says she had attended Guangzhou Medical College. She also had operated a massage salon in Duyun, China, before coming to Hawaii, it says.
Adam Cadorna said he and his husband, Qui, initially did not remember the suspect, but later recalled catching the elevator with him a few times.
Adam Cadorna remembers saying hello to him in the elevator and commenting on his shoes. He said hi, and appeared to be a normal guy, “like nothing was happening.”
“No way” said Adam, when asked if he would have suspected his neighbor of killing someone. “I work with people with behavior issues, but I never seen it in him.”
